Here are some ideas and marketing tips to use in your flower shop.
· Brand Your Flower Shop. Create an image for your floral shop. Take the time and spend the money necessary to build an image for your flower shop. Everyone likes to go the popular place to shop or eat. If your flower shop was called Daisy’s Flowers, it would be your success if everyone said, “Let’s go to Daisy’s for our corsages! Make your shop name a household word. Make your shop easy and fun! The days of stuffy old flower shops are over.
· Purchase roses and carnations in bulk. Whenever possible purchase flowers in quantity and at special prices then pass on the savings to your customers. In the summer roses dip in your cost. Buy them in 500 lots of assorted colors. You can sell them quickly by advertising and putting them outside your shop if appropriate. Those roses you do not sell can be hung and dried for dried floral arrangements. Now that’s a win-win situation. The smell of roses in your store will be wonderfully intoxicating! Carnation cans be bought for pennies in the summer. Run super, super specials. Let your customers feel like they can splurge on themselves.
· Create standard arrangements. Generate some designs in several different price ranges, preferably at least three different selections of prices. The key here is to standardize the arrangements so that costs on kept low, and the design labor is kept to a minimal. By reducing cost of labor and cost of goods, you can offer your valued customers a budget item yet while keeping the quality of the product offered high.
· Give your customers ranges of choice. Design floral arrangements at price points that will produce a nice amount of lucrative sales. Find what price points at which your patrons seem to hesitate. Examples may be $10-20, $20-30, $35 and up. Also bud vases are necessary to add sales for under $10. But customers want choices. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. One thing they are putting into consideration is the occasion for which they are buying. An extreme example would be buying for a 50th wedding anniversary bouquet versus buying for a get well flower arrangement
· Advertise specific arrangements or products. Every week have a weekly special. It could be a three carnation bud vase for $5.99. Maybe a balloon bouquet of one Mylar balloon and eleven latex balloons. Get creative and original. Look what others are doing, and do it a step better somehow; this advertising always keeps your flower shop name out there. Go into other shops and see what they are doing. When I would do this I always came out feeling like I was doing a good job. It made me feel better. As business people, we always want to feel we are at least doing as good a job as our competitors.
How to Open & Operate a Financially Successful Florist and Floral Business Both Online and Off: With Companion CD - ROM
How to Open & Operate a Financially Successful Florist and Floral Business Both Online and Off: With Companion CD - ROM
How to Open & Operate a Financially Successful Florist and Floral Business Both Online and Off: With Companion CD - ROM 
